


so we don't kill the ones that we love

by thegrumblingirl



Series: the blood ran out and i became a god [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Daud is after the Eyeless not the Outsider, Family Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, as told by Billie as she's standing on a balcony, can be shippy if you squint, fight me Harvey, fixed that for you Harvey, my version of Death of the Outsider, non-lethal ending, the game came out yesterday so... spoilers?, this is a bit of a rambling mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 16:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12112695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: It was as strange as anything had ever been, the life they were living now. Billie missed the gentle sway of a ship below her feet, the groaning of the hull, the lapping of the waves and the squawking of the gulls.





	so we don't kill the ones that we love

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I played DOTO and cried and cried and rolled my eyes, and then headcanon after headcanon threatened to break my heart, so I wrote them all down. It's four in the morning and I started writing around midnight, and if it's a mess — I don't care, they're alive and sort of happy and I like it.

It was as strange as anything had ever been, the life they were living now. Billie missed the gentle sway of a ship below her feet, the groaning of the hull, the lapping of the waves and the squawking of the gulls.

She was leaning against the rail of a balcony, half decayed as most of her living arrangements were these days; looking down at civilians and guards passing in the street below, unawares. They didn't know about her, or about the two men in the tiny apartment behind her. It was still early.

They were both foolish old men, she thought to herself with a smirk, but where one's face was marked by his age and the choices he'd made, the other looked upon the world with eyes as old as the Void. Daud's abilities were gone, his already tenuous connection to the Void severed by the strain of travelling to the Hold — Black Magic Brute no more. Billie's own were intact, and she wondered if Emily was alright, or if she at least knew that something had changed. That the Outsider's Mark wasn't any longer her conduit to the Void.

The Outsider.

The name was everywhere still, the world not yet falling to pieces. And how would they know? He spoke to few in any generation, Daud had told her so long ago, teaching her what he knew — as long as it didn't reveal too many secrets of his own. He'd never told her how the Outsider had found him, how he'd been marked. Perhaps he never would. Billie didn't expect him to, not even now. Not even knowing he'd forgiven her for what she'd done to him.

So now, the Outsider was no more, with the world at large none the wiser. There were stirrings in the Abbey, though nothing as yet cataclysmic. The Eyeless had crumbled, making nary a sound as they vanished from the world, the survivors hiding themselves away following the desecration of their inner sanctum. Billie had done it gladly.

Sneaking through that structure up on Shindaeray Peak, Daud right behind her and only refraining from groaning and cursing at her because they dared not make too much noise, Billie had cursed all of them. The Eyeless, for building a cult around the sacrifice of an innocent child; herself for never leaving well enough alone; Daud for being right in the middle of one of his damn _mysteries_ when she'd finally found him.

Seeing him down in that pit — her heart had stuttered, shock and fear and rage all at once. They'd used the music to keep him under. She remembered it well; like being stripped of half of your spirit, with the other half left behind in agony. At the Conservatory, Billie had listened to the recorded interrogations of half a dozen witches. Their screams had lasted for minutes — Daud had been in that cage for days, weeks at a time. Emily had told her that she'd sabotaged the Oraculum to sever Breanna Ashworth's connection to the Void. Daud should be so lucky that the continued exposure to the music hadn't robbed him of his just before he could complete this final job.

He'd shown her all his research, all bundled up in files and archives the way she remembered, labelled neatly, the notes in his even, slightly slanted scrawl. Where her own hand was quick, to the point, Daud still took his time. He'd explained everything — how he'd heard rumblings of a coven of witches establishing themselves in Karnaca. A name, whispered on the wind: Delilah. He'd begun his investigation then, but got sidetracked when following one of Delilah's acolytes to Dunwall, embroiled in a cruel plot against the Royal Protector. There, he'd learnt of a weapon, used in an attempt on Emily's life by a man named Zhukov, Hero of Tyvia. Another in the long list of those betrayed by the Lord Regent, apparently.

Daud had followed the knife back to Serkonos, back to Karnaca — back to the Eyeless. It was his tenacity and, though he'd never admit it, endless curiosity that got him noticed and, ultimately, captured by the cult's goons. Billie knew he blamed it on a combination of getting old and getting careless, having lived away from Dunwall for so long, away from the daily grind of looking over your shoulder while you made your way across the rooftops of a crumbling city.

During the Coup, he'd been cooped up in the pit, let out only for fights that he won because he had to — and because the call of the Void in your bones was too sweet to ignore after being parted from it. Billie remembered that, too. He'd read about Delilah usurping Emily's throne in what scraps of newspapers he could pocket without being caught, had cursed his own choice of letting her live, trapping her in the Void instead of ending her then and there.

His brows had climbed higher and higher, then, when Billie had told him all about how she'd come to Dunwall to warn Corvo, how she'd harboured Emily on her ship and ferried her back to her Tower to see the job done. Billie knew Emily had picked her pocket that day — she'd let her, invited her. She'd wanted her to know. She'd confessed as much to Daud, who had taken the news that Emily (and Corvo, like as not) now knew what he'd done to save Emily all those years ago with barely concealed discomfort. How she'd obtained a copy of that damn audiograph, he'd wanted to know, and she'd smiled and told him she had her ways. In truth, it had been the last favour she'd called in from Thomas before they'd gone their separate ways; but she wouldn't tell him that. It was enough he most likely already knew Thomas had lied to him.

And so, Daud thanked her for his freedom and, foolishly, Billie had been entirely too prepared for him to tell her they were even, and that they'd never see each other again.

He didn't, though.

Instead, he asked for her help.

The Eyeless were a plague on the city, filling the power vacuum left behind by the Howlers and the Abbey following Paolo and Byrne's disappearance. Strange murders were scaring the citizens, and city administrators and ruthless bankers were bleeding them dry, to coin a phrase.

If the Eyeless had the knife, then Daud wanted to know why — Billie stared at him out of both of her eyes, and demanded of him a question she made clear she would only ask once.

'If we find the knife, what are you going to do with it?'

His reply, at least, was honest. 'I don't know.'

In the nights that followed freeing him, Billie alternated between terrible dreams and listening as Daud groaned in his sleep in the other room. Muttered her name, too, in his dreams. She wondered if this was really how she should set about reclaiming her identity; but then he woke her at dawn by rapping his knuckles against her door and offering coffee and she couldn't but laugh — silently — at how the Daud she'd known wouldn't have been caught dead bringing anyone a cup of coffee in the mornings.

He was weak still, but recovering even as it was an uphill battle. One night, she sat up straight in her cot, shaking with the aftershocks of the dream — but it might as well have been the hacking cough from the other side that woke her. Practically slapping herself awake, she heaved herself out of bed to see to him, finding him curled up on Anton's old cot, one arm wrapped around his ribcage, trying to muffle the noise in the crook of his elbow. Too late, she told him, turned on the lights and went to fetch him a glass of water, helped him drink it, then knelt on the floor, by his head.

He took her hand in his, then, and insisted that if he didn't make it through the night, she had to continue looking into the Eyeless, to prevent another disaster. She felt rage surge inside her, that he should think to leave her after she'd just found him again, but she chained it and forced herself to breathe, because otherwise she'd scream at him. He waited for her answer, his grey eyes as unflinching as they'd ever been, but warmer now. Open. And Billie knew that he only allowed himself to be this way believing he was on the brink of death.

So she told him, 'I won't bury you.'

Then, she stood and went back to bed. In the morning, there was coffee.

The next night, the Outsider took away her arm and eye, and left her with a gift — to see the places where the Void seeped into the world, fragments shifting in the hollows left behind. Daud took her chin and tilted her face, took her hand and pulled her arm towards him to inspect it, and she let him. She read the journal he left lying about, he knew she did, and it was his remarks about her growing distant and cold towards him all those years ago that cut the most deeply. Back in Dunwall, she'd convinced herself he wouldn't even notice. Wouldn't even care. He warned her to be careful, saying that the Outsider's gifts came with a price you didn't even know you'd already paid until it was too late. Billie didn't ask what his price had been.

She ran the first two missions alone, in Upper Cyria, finding the leaders of the Eyeless and dispatching the first two. The bank job was next, and Daud so pale when she left that she feared returning. But when she did, he was there, on the tiny pier, watching her skiff approach, tossing a small rock in the air almost absently. She docked, and he bent to offer her a hand to help her up. She eyed his hand, he smirked. She took it. That night, she dreamed of Deidre and Daud's marked hand, cut off at the wrist and cold in death. In the morning, there was no knock, no offer of coffee, and she hadn't heard him groan all night. She barely dared open the door, tiptoeing around the corner with dread sitting in her chest. He was still asleep, his breathing even. Billie put her hand over her mouth and closed her eye, ordering herself not to give in to tears. Then she turned and made coffee.

They had the knife. The Outsider himself had moulded it into a part of her, her Whaler blade put aside following the heist. That night, they spent hours debating the possibilities. Of course Daud had thought about it — killing a god. He hated the Outsider, she knew that much. Only, she didn't know if it was for leaving Daud to fend for himself — or for choosing him in the first place. The shrine in the Legal District had been the first in a long time that had actually awakened to pull Daud into the Void, sending him into a trance, the first in years, and Billie had been with Daud for nearly a decade then.

'What if we have to?' Daud asked.

'There is always another way.'

Emily had always found one. Corvo had, during the plague. And so had Daud, in his tussle with Delilah. If they wanted to break the Eyeless cult and its hold over Karnaca, returning the knife to the Void was the key. But beyond that, Billie would make her choice when it came down to it.

She kept her dream about his hand to herself, too unsettled by nagging memories of something Emily had mentioned, in passing, about Paolo. The hand of a witch, Vera... something. Daud might know the name. Billie kept her mouth shut.

He clicked his tongue at her when he found his old Dunwall wanted poster, and warned her of nostalgia. She said nothing, only watched him putter about her ship, grumbling to himself, reminding her of Anton in some ways, and yet so different. He was still clean-shaven, for one thing.

The Dreadful Wale took in more water that night and began to tilt, and Billie woke to the unceremonious banging of a fist against her door and Daud barking for her to get up and get her things. Sitting on the dock, they watched as the ship she'd called her home for so long sank into the depths. It took hours. When it was gone, Daud put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.

Seeing as their next objective was the Royal Conservatory, they made their way into Cyria Gardens, using smuggling routes to get into the district. There were enough abandoned apartments to be getting on with, and enough space for two mattresses and a generator. Billie didn't think to be nervous to sleep a foot away from him, but then it wasn't even dawn and she was sitting up, gasping for breath and gripped with fear, clamping her mouth shut and closing her eyes tightly when she realised where they were. But it was too late. Daud was awake and his hand hovering above hers, leaving it up to her. Again, she took it, took the comfort he offered and was glad he didn't say a word.

Daud felt well enough to help, and even with his hold on the Void weakened by months in the pit, his Blink reached as far as ever. It looked different, too, more like how Daud had described Corvo's ability than what she remembered. Daud and the Whalers had simply dissolved into fragments of the Void that fluttered away on the wind like ash. She watched for a moment as he knocked out one Overseer and sleepdarted another. Then, he turned and looked up, seeing her perched on a streetlight and waved a hand as if saying, you still here? Back in Dunwall, she'd have... well. She'd not actually been condemned to as many shifts of kitchen duty as she probably should have.

She made her way inside the Conservatory, leaving Daud to follow on his own, and he found her staring in horror at the remains of the Oraculum. She'd never actually seen any of Ashworth's effigies, Emily keeping mum about what she'd found in the Duke's vault. They were grotesque.

It was Daud's turn to watch her mutely when she took the Overseers face and attended the meeting with Sister Rosewyn in his stead, then returned triumphant with the stolen archive Cienfuegos had sent to Ashworth before his untimely demise. They hightailed it out of the Conservatory before anyone could find the bodies they'd stashed underneath desks and in dark corners.

'You ever think it might be funny to take my face — don't,' Daud muttered when they passed through the deactivated Wall of Light. Billie grinned.

The trek to the North Quarry was a bitch and a half, and not only because it took them two days longer than it would have taken Billie on her own. Daud didn't apologise for his old bones and Billie didn't want him to.

The Outsider appeared to them both before they set out for the quarry, taunting them. Telling them that, if they just looked closely enough, they might find his name. Then he vanished, leaving them to stare at each other in confusion.

Nothing could have prepared them for what they found inside. The Eyeless worshipped the Eye, no wonder. It was one thing she caught one of the leaders saying to those guarding what they referred to as the Ritual Hold that had her blood run cold: that the Outsider was sleeping, that he'd sleep forever, bound to the Void. Pushing at Daud's shoulders, she urged him back into an area they'd already cleared and hissed, 'Did you hear that? He's not... he's not _dead_.'

Daud's eyes darkened. 'Then perhaps we should put him out of his misery.'

'Not if there's another way.'

The way led them to the Eye.

Billie touched it, and her mind screamed. The world around her changed, twisted and bent, and then she was in the Void and she could see... _everything_.

'Daud, I—'

At first she thought he was gone, but then she saw him on the ground a few feet away, unmoving.

'No. No no no, no,' she muttered, sinking to her knees beside him. She found a pulse, but barely, the transition into the complete vastness of the Void overwhelming his body. She cursed the Eyeless again. Then, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, looked — and froze. Creatures, seemingly made out of the Void. Guarding it. Envisioned, the Eyeless called them. And one of them had spotted her.

Dashing away from Daud, she faced the creature. Much like Clockwork Soldiers, these things looked to be unbeatable in a straight fight. On a hunch, she charged her voltaic shot as high as it might go, then set off a round. The creature sunk to its knees, if its limbs could be described that way, and Billie didn't ask for a second chance. She plunged her sword into its skull, cleaving it apart with steel and her bare hands.

It worked.

Her blood pumping, she hoped there wouldn't be too many of those on her way down. Searching the area, she found a telescope, its sights set on the entrance to the Ritual Hold — and a body next to it. The scholar who had been punished with death for daring to try to enter it. Billie pocketed the key and his notes, then turned to Daud, still unconscious. She couldn't leave him here, but Outsider's eyes, he was heavy, heavier than she remembered from helping him to his quarters once, badly injured after a brush with the Abbey that had cost them two novices and a good deal of pride; but then, Rulfio had shouldered the other half of the burden that day.

It should have been impossible, but things that seemed impossible had a way of bending to her will when she had no other choice. And she didn't. She evaded the Envisioned when she could, and when she couldn't, she tried not to drop him like a sack of potatoes, dispatching the creatures in her way before they could rain hell down on her; then breaking into the restricted area and uncovering another mystery. She almost smiled. Daud, always so fond of puzzles. Must have finally rubbed off on her.

When she made it to the Hold, it was as she'd feared. A boy, with his arms bent back and his mouth opened in a silent scream, encased in the core of the Void.

He was not the monster, not truly. The Eyeless were. 'For all that he's done to us,' Daud had said during one of their arguments, but what had he done to them that they hadn't passed on a thousandfold? The Outsider had given them the means to fight back, and what had they done? Held the knife for others instead of making their own choices, and called themselves powerful. Billie knew that Daud had come to see this, back in Dunwall. It was disappointment and guilt, she was certain, for knowing that banishing Delilah had only made her worse than ever. The Void was not a safe place, for anyone, but least of all those with a thirst for power and an axe to grind.

In the Hold now, he fought for breath, stirring where he was slung over her shoulder. She set him down gently, cradling his head in her human hand, tears spilling from her human eye.

'You do not have permission to die,' she reminded him, uncaring that she was baring her teeth and making it sound like a threat. In his audacity, he laughed. A sound she hadn't heard in a long time.

'I drank the last of your good whiskey, you should be glad to be rid of me,' he wheezed, chuckling and then coughing.

'Never,' she swore, and she believed it.

Feverishly, she looked around. The scholar's notes said that the old names could only be read by the ancient ones — or the dead. She saw spirits flickering around them, blinking in and out, but never manifesting.

She left Daud on the ground, feeling his eyes on her as she stepped closer to the Outsider. _His_ eyes, so black. Slowly, carefully, she raised her hand to her own eye. The right one. She had looked into the eye of a god and come out alive. If she saw everything — why should she not see _this_? The dream came back to her. Daud's hand. She turned back towards him, crouching beside him.

'What are you doing?' he asked, his voice brittle as she took his left hand and tugged on his glove. The glove he'd never taken off as long as she'd known him, hiding his Mark from the world so that he could pass unseen if he so chose.

'The right thing,' she bit out. Taking his left in her right, she closed her eyes, searching deep within herself. Dredging up all those feelings she'd been shoving down and ignoring, of the Void pushing itself into her marrow and her blood. The arm had become a part of her, she'd known and she, too, had hated the Outsider for that. The price had been paid.

Billie gasped at the same time as Daud did — he felt it too, and instinctively tried to pull back his hand, but she tightened her hold on him. He'd given her powers like this so long ago, had given her sight to see and a blade to wield; and now she needed him, to _see_ once more.

Opening her eyes, her vision swam with what was there and what was not, Daud's broad hand shifting in and out of the Void — a hollow, too, but it wasn't him that was shifting, it was the Mark. Through the Void, through dimensions, she could see. She remembered what Deidre had done in her dream, and on a hunch, something like warmth rising in her cheeks, she bent over Daud's hand and kissed it, his skin cool against her lips.

'Billie—'

But she'd already let go. She stood and walked, unseeing, her mind's eyes fixed on the Void and in between. She cradled the Outsider's face in her hand, half of it turned to stone, and leaned in, her mouth close to his ear. She let go of her mind fighting knowledge she should not possess, a language she could not speak. She whispered, the sounds she did not comprehend drifting over her tongue.

She waited.

The Hold broke and crumbled around them, Billie catching the Outsider — the boy in her arms as he was freed.

'I can taste blood in my mouth. I can hear your voice in my ear. You have done something impossible.'

'We can take you out of here,' she promised him as he staggered, his knees nearly giving out underneath him.

'These eyes were closed for centuries, and I saw everything. Bound here, I walked through the minds of generations. And now...' He did have to sit down, then, half-turning when he felt Daud come up on his other side.

'You're free,' Daud told him. There was no hatred in his eyes.

They couldn't take back what had been done to the boy, all those years ago. No more than they could take back what had been done to them. But now, they all had the chance to be something new. To be something better. It had to be strange for him, knowing what he knew, seeing with old eyes all the secrets of the world. He, Billie, and Daud had seen the worst in people’s hearts. But in the end, perhaps they could find some peace.

That had been nigh on a month ago now. Billie had grit her teeth and seen both of her charges out of the Void, out of Shindaeray Peak, and if anyone ever asked her how, she'd tell them she had no fucking clue. She had forced her will on the world that day, in more ways than one.

And now, with Daud mostly healed and the boy growing stronger in the southern sun, they wondered where to go next.

A cup of coffee appeared at her elbow. She took it.


End file.
